


thicker than water

by FifteenDozenTimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 02:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/FifteenDozenTimes
Summary: Clarus finds a quiet moment for a father-son talk before it's too late.





	thicker than water

**Author's Note:**

> Gladnis Week Day 5: Marriage

“Good morning,” Clarus says, and Ignis freezes up for a moment as if he isn’t in Clarus’ kitchen nearly every morning, as if he doesn’t basically live here because Gladio cares about being present at home and Ignis cares about being with Gladio. He can nearly feel Clarus’ fond eye roll, so similar to his son’s, and Ignis shakes his head and relaxes his shoulders. At least there are no hickeys to speak of this morning.

“Sir.”

“Clarus.”

“Of course. Apologies.” That eye roll again, and a soft chuckle. Ignis busies himself finishing up the eggs he’s poaching, centering them neatly on perfectly-browned toast, and starting another three for Clarus. Bread in the toaster oven, salt, pepper, and garnish on his own plate, toast out of the oven, eggs out of the pan, yolks pierced so they’ll have soaked into the bread when he hands the plate to Clarus, salt, pepper, garnish, and when he turns around with their breakfasts he’s shaken off his regular morning awkwardness.

“I don’t know why I still pay Jared,” Clarus says, dividing his toast into quarters with the side of his fork so he can shovel it into his mouth more easily. Where _does_ Gladio get it.

“I could list his duties for you,” Ignis says.

“Astrals, no.” Clarus says, “If you remind me of all the things I’ve forgotten how to do for myself I’ll never recover.”

Clarus picks up the paper to read in silence; Ignis finishes his meal, clears their plates, sets coffee brewing, wipes down the table and the counter, unloads the dishwasher. It’s the same thing he does at home in the morning, but he prepares for another comment from Clarus about it. For a man who frequently sleeps on the sofa in King Regis’ chambers because he works until he’s too tired to retire to his own rooms, he is awfully concerned about Ignis potentially overworking. 

There’s no joke about the help or sincere attempt to tell Ignis to laugh, though; Clarus is just staring into space when Ignis turns, paper forgotten on the table. Ignis crosses the room to pour himself a cup of coffee, and one for Clarus.

“What are the odds Gladio will be up in time for me to catch him before I leave?” he asks. “Oh, and thank you.”

“You’ve already missed him, he left for his run and I believe he’s going straight to the Citadel.”

“I suppose you’re all quite busy, right now.”

“Nothing we can’t manage,” Ignis says. “But it is a bit of a crunch. I believe you have a meeting with him scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Do I?” Clarus pulls out his phone, looks at his schedule for a moment, and shrugs. “So I do. Why do you know my schedule better than I do?”

“It’s my job,” Ignis says, though they both know it isn’t. “And I like to know Gladio’s schedule.”

“Of course.” Clarus glances at his cup of coffee, at his discarded paper, sighs, and looks up at Ignis. “If you don’t have anywhere pressing to be, would you mind taking a seat? There’s a - there are matters I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

Ignis’ heart jumps into his throat for a moment, before settling into its normal place and beating wildly. He doesn’t have to be anywhere for an hour or so, and it’s not as if Noct is going to complain if he’s late to drill him on Altissian, Tenebraen, and Nifleheim diplomacy all morning.

“Sir?”

“ _Clarus_ ,” he insists, with an unusual intensity. Ignis’ heart rate jumps another ten beats or so, but he clenches up his toes and the fingers of his free hands, pushes all his tension into it, relaxes them and lets that relaxation trick his body into thinking he’s calm.

“Sorry.”

“I like you, Ignis,” Clarus says. “I’ve liked you since all I knew was you were an odd child and your presence meant Gladio could have a friend his age. You’re astonishingly bright, you’ve managed to take this odd role Regis invented for you and turned it into something I forget the Citadel used to run without, and you somehow manage to continue exceeding expectations, no matter how high those expectations become.”

“Thank you,” Ignis says, bites down the _sir_ that tries very hard to come out of his mouth. There’s going to be a but, Ignis need not add to it.

“I knew that was the face you’d make,” Clarus says, with a small smile. “There’s no hammer coming down, I just felt I needed to make clear how highly I regard you, how proud I am of the man you’ve grown to be and the man you’ve helped my son become. These things shouldn’t go unsaid.”

“I - thank you.”

“You know, I think, a fair amount about the - “ Clarus waves his hand in the air, a thing all Amicitias do when the word they want to say is _bullshit_ \- “intricacies of centuries-old family lines, touched by divinity, fooled around with by the Astrals when they get bored, ruled by prophecy and destiny and grandiose things like that.”

“I’ve made it a point to learn the full history of the Lucis Caelums,” Ignis says. “I assume much of the Amicitia history is the same.”

“With a small difference, which turns out to be all the difference in the world. Lucis Caelums are born to rule, and Amicitias are born to sacrifice. There’s the rare King or Queen in the lineage who abdicated to their heir and faded into a quiet retirement, but no Shield has ever done the same. Has ever had the option, really. My own father - well, there’s a reason King Mors needed Cor.”

Ignis is familiar with Clarus’ loud, decisive seriousness in council meetings, cleanly slicing through poorly conceived plans with inconvenient truths. He’s familiar with the quiet Clarus who, on the rare occasion he makes it home to a family dinner, sits at the head of the table and watches his children bicker. He’s never seen that seriousness and that understated quiet together before, certainly not directed at himself, and it makes him want to shrink away, to protest. _You can’t tell me all this,_ Gladio had said, years ago, when King Regis told them of the prophecy about Noctis, _I’m just a kid_.

This is clearly important, however, and Ignis is nothing if not good at squaring his shoulders and taking whatever someone needs to tell him, regardless of his own feelings. Ignis meets Clarus’ gaze, takes a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee, and gestures for him to continue.

“It’s a tricky business, marrying into the Amicitia family,” Clarus says, and Ignis very calmly does not spit out his mouthful of coffee or go sprinting out of the room. “I know, you’re young, and you’re not quite there. But I’d be extremely surprised, Ignis, if that’s not where you end up, and I just wanted to - it’s important, to me, to have this conversation with you. Unless you’re uncomfortable.”

“No,” Ignis says, an absolute lie and both of them know it. “Please, go on.”

“Gladio and Iris’ mother,” Clarus begins, pauses, averts his gaze to look out the window over Ignis’ shoulder. Ignis met her, once, but the memory of it is vague, and she was gone just a year later. People seem to accept the fiction it’s always just been the three Amicitias, that Gladio and Iris sprang fully-formed from the soil. “It was too much for her. If my father had lived long enough to have this talk with her, if my mother - but it wasn’t their job, of course. But we were young, and so many things seemed so far away, so easy to handle when the time came. It wasn’t. It isn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Ignis says; Clarus smiles at him, weak but genuine.

“It does something to a person, to hold a brand new baby in your arms and know the moment another man’s child is born his life will cease to be his own. To watch him toddling around and know he’ll die too young, too violently, and the only saving grace is you’ll have died long before that. To know that if the Astrals have a plan for him, nothing you do can save him. And to grow up like that, to have your life taken away from you before you’re old enough to know better, to never truly be your own person, to offer your life to someone you love knowing they can only ever have the parts the King doesn’t use up. It’s easier, I’m sure, for us, for Gladio and myself and my father and his mother, because we never know better. I can’t quite fathom the strength it takes to _choose_ this.”

Every now and then, in Ignis’ intensive history studies, he’d come across some particularly bloody battle, an attempted coup the sitting King managed to beat back at the price of his Shield, nasty poisonings, bodies upon bodies thrown in front of ever more advanced weaponry to maintain the Lucis Caelum line and keep it safe. He would think of Gladio, thirteen, spotty-faced and an inch taller every time Ignis saw him. He would think of Gladio broken, bloodied, the warmth gone out his eyes, the life gone out of his body.

The first time Gladio kissed him, the color bled out of the world and rushed back in more vibrant than Ignis had ever seen.

“I’m not sure how much of a choice it really is,” he says, and Clarus smiles for real, shaking his head.

“Youth,” he says, and Ignis chooses not to bristle at it. “But you’re not wrong.”

“Is there - why are you telling me this now?”

Clarus sighs, and when he looks at Ignis again he’s wearing the grim face he’s worn at every council meeting for weeks. Ignis is finally starting to pick patterns out of his exhaustive notes, pull together a sketchy picture from the fragmented lines drawn across weeks of arguments that have little to do with anything. 

“You know something’s coming,” Clarus says. “Several of the council haven’t picked up on it, not fully, but I know you, Ignis. It may blow over. It probably won’t. And either way, things will be different afterwards, and I didn’t want to - I don’t intend to regret things I haven’t said.”

“Sir,” Ignis says, but he doesn’t know what else to say. For once, Clarus doesn’t correct him, and that’s the moment fear begins to creep up Ignis’ spine. “Clarus. Is - does Gladio - “

“I’ll be talking with him later today,” Clarus says, “as you know. I don’t want to worry you, either of you. Perhaps I’m just growing maudlin in my old age, seeing doors closing when they’re still wide open.”

Ignis doesn’t believe that, but he nods anyway. He takes a sip of his coffee, now cold, makes a face, and pushes it away. Clarus rises from the table.

“I have appointments I can’t put off any longer,” he says. “I left some books for you in the foyer, if you’re interested. Impossible to truly understand something without reading about it.”

“Thank you,” Ignis says. If he could find the right words, maybe he could crack Clarus open a little, take on more of the burden he so clearly needs to lighten, but they slip just out of reach of his tongue. He stands, but it feels wrong to walk out of the room before Clarus, the mood still hanging so heavy between them.

“I appreciate you taking the time,” Clarus says, and draws Ignis into perhaps the most crushing hug of his life. Ignis holds on tight, can’t quite place why he’s tearing up but the tears come anyway. Clarus lets go, and pats his cheek. “You tell that layabout prince to take care of my sons.”


End file.
